Nick Hamm er lige for tiden højaktuel med filmen Driven, og du kan læse vores eksklusive interview lige her:

This film is kind of a celebration of failure.

I always celebrate great failure.

Yes, but why the celebration of failure?

I quite like the idea of male failure. I think it’s quite interesting. I mean, I did that in Killing Bono and I think that’s about failure. A guy that didn’t succeed. And in this sense I mean it wasn’t about the sense of failure it was about a huge act of what I call reckless hubris, where a man who is so successful at everything in front of him and had a lifestyle to die for, who is committed to this extraordinary stupid thing and got involved in this crazy madness and you have to ask yourself, why did he do that, why did he surrender after all of that for something so wrong. And I think that is quite interesting cause what happens is, guys like that feel amusable, feel like they can’t be touched. And I think that’s what’s happened now in our culture to a certain extend, very powerful people feel like they can’t be in any way touched by normal rules of the law, so that’s why I think it’s got so much currency in it, which is kind of interesting. We spend our lives listening to politicians entertainers, it’s all about the one line and how sharp, interesting and witty you are, it has absolutely nothing to do with if you’re able to keep the trains running on time, or the hospitals open or the roads working, and so we celebrate these people who are kind of telegenic, hyponastic narcissist, and I would say that he is exactly that. So it’s kind of an interesting kind for trauma, it’s an interesting look.

The movie could be presented in a much darker way than it is. How come you chose comedy?

Cause I think comedy, if you can make something comedic and something funny, then I think the audience love it. You are telling a quite dark story, you’re telling a story of a man’s complete downfall and another man lying the whole time about everything. Jason’s character is a complete scumbag, he’s an absolute lying, loser, kind of type, and if you play that character harshly or brutally, then there would be no sympathy, so I think we enjoy watching the flip-side in all of these characters, and I think we enjoy seeing it in a context of comedy because it allows us to laugh at them and us, we can recognize our own things. And I think if you can make something funny, why wouldn’t you make it funny? Isn’t it much better to make something funny and make it easier to listen to and humorous.

I was thinking about Jason Sudeikis, I find him very likable. How did you make his character? And why give Jason the role?

I think the real person was an utter scumbag, totally low-life cheat, liar and poorly individual, like one of the worst kind of individuals you can meet. I think he was slimy, a liar, he worked for various forms of criminal organizations, he had no compunction about deceiving people, and since he has been 20, he has been involved with different crimes across the US. He’d been working for the FBI as a scumbag informant, snitch, whatever you want to call it, for years. So, if you got a character like that, it’s hard to represent that character in a very hard way, so what I needed was someone who was sympathetic, who naturally is likable. So, if you represent someone who is a likable, a liar and a cheat it’s kind an interesting position for the audience, because if they hate him and he’s too hard, then there’s no movie because then you don’t like him. So, I needed someone who had a kind of humanity in them, who loves his wife, his kids and he is trying to do his best for all of that, I think that’s a really interesting juxta-position. So, Jason fulfilled that for me, so the comedian side of that was very important to me, you know, Jason can make a comedy out of anything, even just by looking at it.

Were there any preparation before filming?

No, the script was very good, but Jason and I would work in the morning on whatever scenes he was in that day, and because he is such a great writer, I would trust him to come up with a line here and there, so we’d add on top of it. And when we fixed the script, that was it, we never needed to improvise. You don’t really need to improvise if you have a good piece of material, you need to if you have a shit script, and then you are really in trouble and then the actors need to prevent something.

DeLorean was a huge success after Back to the Future. Why do you think we have a huge nostalgia for the 70’s-80’s?

That’s easy, course we always look back on our history, but not too far away, and I don’t know why we do that, but we always think of it as a more innocent time, but it wasn’t. In my reflections the 70’s was, well I’m old enough to remember it, I was there. You are talking about a decade pre-80’s, pre-climate-change, post-60’s, yes it was depressing because it was that whole thing, but it was also pre-any of the huge issues, there was a kind of innocence around that period. Consequences, there was none, it was just crazy. In the 80’s you started punk, you had different music, different things going on. It was a similar time but in the 80’s things really changed. So, the 70’s to me always looked like, when you look at the clothes that people whore, you go:” Wow, look at that!” but everybody whore it, and the music was new. It was post-60’s and pre-aids, you know the sexual revolution had happened and it was around, and it was there, but it hadn’t designated everybody, it wasn’t that level of fear. So, to a certain extent, I’m not saying the 80’s was a great time, I remember I was in school, I was constantly depressed, but it’s a different time.

What do you like about telling true stories in movies?

I like the idea, that I can navigate between what’s truthful and what isn’t truthful. And I can play with that, and I think the audience like that too. I think they like the whole idea of being revealed, that it might not be what they think. I’m not a documentarian, this is not a documentary, I’m not saying this is actually what happened, I’m saying; ”Look these things happened, and within this I can play drama. I like the idea that there is an element of authenticity and truth to it.

Can you tell us a little bit about the character Bill DeLorean?

Look Lee [Pace] is 20 years younger than that guy, he’s a very young man, and he had studied DeLorean a lot and the thing about DeLorean, and he said it himself: ”I always want to be the cleverest guy in the room.” He was 6.5 foot and Lee is about that, he was the tallest man and he was handsome and charismatic and charming, there was an old-fashion 50’s movies stuff that would sit to him and you would feel it in his presence, there was a true formality to him, which I think was totally manufactured, by the way. He came from a working-class background, his parents were immigrants, he weren’t sent to a big private school, he wasn’t educated in rich environments, so he invented himself the same way as Gatsby did like; I’m going to invent my life and then I’m going to say ”This is my life, you can have my life, you can have all the cause, all the girls, the parties and if you buy my car, you can live like this”. So, he was the first guy to do that. So, when Lee got into it, he came very prepared and I thought that was great the way and so he has quite a quality-star to him, I think as an actor, and I think that was essential.

What’s your next project?

”I don’t know.”

”Is it going to be a true story as well?”

”Yeah probably, I’ve got an idea, but I haven’t gotten it written yet, I’m halfway through it.”

”What’s the idea?”

”Well, I might do something about Castro being in New York in the 60’s and meeting Malcom X. I think it’s quite interesting, I quite like the idea of during something of Castro prior to him becoming a communist, so when he came to New York he was quite open, so I’m kind of playing with those three characters.”